Bertrand Russell was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His primary interest was in the foundations of mathematics, and his three-volume Principia Mathematica (written with Alfred North Whitehead) is the classic attempt to carry out the programme of deriving the whole of mathematics from a set of simple, self-evident truths. He also wrote widely on other areas of philosophy, and published a large number of writings on social and moral issues.John Skorupski is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of St Andrews, and author of English-Language Philosophy 1750-1945 (1993) and John Stuart Mill (1989).

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• Introduction ; Preface ; 1. Appearance and Reality ; 2. The Existence of Matter ; 3. The Nature of Matter ; 4. Idealism ; 5. Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description ; 6. On Induction ; 7. On Our Knowledge of General Principles ; 8. How A Priori Knowledge is Possible ; 9. The World of Universals ; 10. On Our Knowledge of Universals ; 11. On Intuitive Knowledge ; 12. Truth and Falsehood ; 13. Knowledge, Error, and Probable Opinion ; 14. The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge ; 15. The Value of Philosophy ; Bibliographical Note ; Appendix: Foreword to the German Edition ; Guide to Further Reading